Dust

by Eva Marie Everson

On my third Christmas, Santa managed to get a swing set from Sears & Roebuck into his sleigh and deposit it—red bow and all—to the backyard of our home. He even positioned it so my mother could stand at the kitchen window and watch my sister and me pump our little legs, forcing the cold metal swings higher and higher. Over the years, until I was too large to fit on its narrow seat, I spent the better part of my thinking hours there. This was where I dreamed. Where I created situations and circumstances I called “my stories.” This is where, when I’d reached the end of them, I’d leap, arching above the green earth, arms flung wide, until I landed flat on my feet with a jarring bound.

  I had turned thirteen or possibly fourteen when Daddy finally removed the rusted chains and unused swings and the two-seated glider, replacing them all with a wooden patio swing. He painted the frame and the swing in a soothing shade of forest green. Now, my actions upon it were different, but I still had a renewed place to think. To contemplate. To write in my diary uninterrupted. And to sit with friends on warm summer evenings, waiting for the sun to dip behind the line of tall, dark pines until the lightning bugs emerged. Waiting for the blue of the sky to turn to gray and then to black and the stars to come out. Waiting to lean my head back and look up and say, “There’s the Big Dipper …”—the only constellation I clearly recognized in the summer months.

  Orion being the one in fall and winter. But that came later. With Michelle.

  The evening Westley came over to talk to my parents—my father in particular—and after all the hand-shaking and after my mother had written down his mother’s phone number in the little address book she kept in a kitchen drawer so they “could talk,” Westley and I slipped out of the back door. We walked hand in hand around the front of the house to the far-right side where the swing had been moved, then dropped onto it. Night’s cloak had already been donned and a distinct chill hung in the air. I shivered as I snuggled into Westley’s arm, draped across the back of the swing. “Cold?” he asked as he removed his jacket without waiting for an answer.

  I shook my head to indicate I would be fine, but he had me wrapped and tucked before I could say the words. I laid my head on his shoulder then, feeling the safety of being with him. Of knowing that—soon enough—he’d be my husband. I, his wife. And that we could do this forever.

  He kissed the top of my head, leaving his lips at the crown until I looked up and found him smiling at me. “I thought we were going to tell them together,” he said.

  I kissed him lightly. “I couldn’t wait.”

  He cocked a brow at my words as though he was about to reprimand me, but when I smiled, he smiled back and asked, “Do you want to talk about dates?” I returned to my original position, then threw my legs over his so I fit like a child against an adult. Westley adjusted me to his liking, then said, “Hmm?”

  “I hadn’t really thought about it.”

  His finger traced a line along my shoulder. “How does May sound to you?”

  I calculated the time. “I thought most brides had a year to plan,” I said, suddenly feeling a little sleepy … and a little too comfortable scrunched up against him.

  Westley tipped my chin up and kissed me in the same way he had the day of the proposal, leaving me wanting so much more than we should do … or possibly could do … especially considering our current location. “Do you want to wait a year?” he asked when the kiss ended.

  “No,” I croaked.

  “Me either.”

  “But I do want to wait,” I said, shifting the meaning.

  He ran his index finger down my nose. “I understand that …” He kissed me again, just as passionately as he had a moment before. Then, “How about December? You can be a Christmas bride.”

  I leaned back, the wood beneath me becoming like bricks. “I couldn’t possibly get everything done in two months, Wes—”

  He kissed me again. “Valentine’s Day?” he asked when we came up for air and my whole body wished to ignite.

  I threw my legs to the ground and bounded up. His coat puddled at my feet. “Hold on,” I shouted as I sprinted toward the house on al dente spaghetti legs and the swing creaked and shook behind me.

  “What are you—” Westley called out.

  “Just hold on,” I hollered like a fishwife, now at the front door. I sailed through it, nearly colliding with my mother who passed through the living room toward the back of the house. Or, I assumed such; she could have been standing at the wide picture window overlooking the front lawn, keeping watch over her virginal child.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, her face drained of its natural tan.

  “Nothing,” I said as though “what could be?” and then hurried toward the kitchen. “I need a calendar.”

  Mama was on my heels. “Are y’all planning a date?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let me get the ’78 calendar that came in the mail the other day.” She turned toward her bedroom.

  “Yeah—okay—sure,” I said while snatching the ’77 calendar from the same drawer where Mama kept her address book … pens … a few pencils … some paper clips … a pair of paper-cutting scissors … and a pack of emery boards. I shoved the drawer shut, met her back in the living room, took the calendar from her extended hand, and said, “Thanks, Mama.”

  “Why do you have—”

  “For comparison,” I lied easily, then stepped back into the chill of the air.

  I made my way to Westley, who sat languidly, a cigarette hanging casually between his fingers. The night had closed in so that I barely made him out until I reached him and slid back into my place beside him. He readjusted his jacket around me, then took one more draw before flicking what was left of the cigarette to the ground and slowly blowing the smoke from between his lips. I opened the ’77 calendar and frowned. “I can’t see a blessed thing.”

  Westley dipped his hand into the pocket of his polyester pants, brought out a lighter, and “flicked” it. “Don’t overexaggerate, Allison.”

  I prickled. “I’m not.”

  He kissed my temple. “What is this?” he asked, looking down with a smirk. “December, you say?”

  I pointed to the square marking the Saturday before Christmas. “I must be out of my mind,” I said. “But if we set the wedding for December seventeenth, the church will already be decorated, which will cut down on a large part of the … you know … stuff to do.”

  “Flowers and such.”

  “Yes. The Chrismon tree will be up and the poinsettias people always give in honor of or in memory of someone are always placed around the altar. I imagine that would look pretty nice.”

  Westley took the calendar from my hand. “I say, let’s keep it simple. What about you?”

  I stared up at him again, lost for a moment in his eyes and the twinkle that outshone the stars already popping out overhead. “The simpler the better.”

  “Who needs the nonsense?”

  I drew closer to him, intoxicated by the Jovan Musk cologne and the faint hint of tobacco still lingering from his occasional indulgence. “Who indeed,” I murmured, my voice dropping low and uncharacteristically sexy. What I knew about the art of seduction I had drawn from the movies I’d seen that included a modicum of forbidden or saucy romance—Romeo and Juliet, for one. Love Story, for another.

  Westley cupped my chin, halting me. “Little girl, if you don’t want to embarrass you and me both on this swing, we’d best get inside and tell your mama and daddy that we’ve settled on a date.” His voice carried both a half-tease and a warning.

  Heat rose in me, furiously slapping me from the inside out. “You’re right. Of course.” I stood abruptly. The calendars dropped to my feet and Westley reached for them as he unfolded himself from the swing, then took my hand in his free one.

  “I must be out of my mind,” I repeated.

  “Two months,” he said, then tugged me toward the front door.

  My grandmother—my mother’s mother—showed up the following afternoon after church and S
unday dinner, and the dishes had been washed, dried, and put away. My sister and her bum husband had driven over from Statesboro as they always did, both acting deliriously happy and in total denial of my parents’ feelings toward him. They left shortly after cleanup, which was my cue to head back to my bedroom for a much-needed nap. I’m not sure how long I’d slept before my mother tapped lightly on the door before entering. I spent a good five seconds blinking to figure out where I was. “Mama …” I frowned at her, my eyes scrunched in protest.

  “Grand is here.”

  My grandmother was a marvelous woman—short in stature but commanding the attention of army generals. Despite the fact she scared me spitless at times, she was among my favorite people in the whole wide world.

  “What’s this I hear?” she asked when I found her in the kitchen. “Paulina tells me that our girl is getting married?”

  “Grand,” I said with a blush, then bent over to wrap her in a hug. “I am.”

  My grandmother had been a widow longer than she’d ever been a wife, her husband—my grandfather—dying after being struck down by a drunk driver while walking down an old country road. My grandfather, my mother often told me, enjoyed long walks on Sunday afternoons down the dirt roads near their farm. That day had been no different. Church, followed by dinner, followed by Grand and the kids lying down for the Sunday afternoon nap, and my grandfather meandering out the front door. But by that evening, Mama said, when her father had not returned, Grand went out in search for him, finding him lying in a twisted knot, the life already gone from him.

  “Something rose up in your grandmother that day,” Mama told me time and again. “Something strong and powerful. She’s never lost it.” Pride welled up in my mother’s voice when she spoke of her father’s death and of the effects it had on her mother. But she never spoke of how it had affected her. She’d been only eleven at the time. Two years younger than her sister Pearl and three years older than “the twins,” Meryl and Melvin. She never said a word about growing up during those hard years without a father … of her mother having to “go into town for work,” or of her mother eventually selling the farm and the whole family moving away from the only home they’d ever known. She never mentioned how it had been that she married Daddy without her father there to give her away, a thought that now struck me nearly off my feet.

  But I’d heard the stories, mostly from Aunt Pearl, who Mama said could talk the ears off a mule, and a little from Daddy who used them to help “explain Mama” to me.

  Several years back, Grand settled into a small house on Georgia Avenue, one that may have been at one time a starter for some sweet couple back in the 1940s but was now a “last home” for her. Almost a shotgun-style house, but not quite. Still, by standing at the front door one could see clear to the back door and, if it was open, into the backyard, which was twice as large as the house. There was a sitting room full of overstuffed old furniture, a dining room not big enough for a proper table and china cabinet (but Grand managed to squeeze them in anyhow), two bedrooms connected by a single bath, and a kitchen stretching wide against the back of the house. It often smelled of cinnamon and rich coffee grounds and reminded me of small plates topped with fat brownies and tall glasses of cold milk on hot summer days. I adored visiting her there and slept over enough that a few of my clothes hung in the front bedroom closet along with at least two pairs of shoes tossed willy-nilly on its floor.

  “Well then,” Grand now said as she rolled up the sleeves of her blouse, “we have a lot of work to do, don’t we.” It wasn’t a question. Very few things with Grand ever were.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, completely unsure.

  “Cooking. Cleaning.” She looked pointedly at me. Me who had never so much as fried an egg or done a load of laundry. My mother had always done that … wasn’t that her purpose? “Let’s start with the basics, shall we?”

  Mama smiled lightly as she patted my shoulder. “I’ll leave you two to this. Your daddy and I are going to watch a little television in the den.”

  I knew my mouth hung open like the entrance to a cave and my eyes moved wildly between the two women who meant the most to me in my life. “Mama,” I whispered as Grand began rattling around under one of the cabinets where stainless steel pots and pans were stored.

  Mama patted my shoulder again. “Have fun,” she mouthed back as Grand suddenly popped up, her hand gripping a pot handle.

  “Now then,” Grand said, turning to me like a drill sergeant. “Do you know how to boil an egg?”

  Chapter Four

  Elaine Singletary had been my best friend since as far back as I could remember, our mothers being the same. Mama and Mrs. Singletary had become close after Grand moved herself and her children to town, Mama often saying that Rose Warren Singletary had been her lifesaver during those awful days of change and upset.

  I felt the same about Elaine. She was my rock. Or at least she had been until Westley came along and then he took that role. She was also the kind of girl who flitted wherever the wind took her—and for now, it had taken her to college to study nursing. After that, she told me, she had no plans other than to bask on the beaches of Tybee for a while.

  Elaine took the ’70s seriously, making note of every fashion-labeled, glossy-covered magazine with slick ads deemed stylish. She parted her long copper-penny hair straight down the middle; it fell thick to her waist, swaying back and forth when she walked. She wore all the right clothes and, being the petite thing she was, looked sensational in every style. I was by no means a large girl, but next to Elaine I felt positively monstrous.

  On that Sunday afternoon, after Grand left—and after I’d not only learned how to boil an egg, but how to crack six of them into the mixture that would become my first pound cake—I called Elaine on the phone to see if she’d already left for the university.

  She hadn’t. “Hey,” I exclaimed, relieved. “You’re still there.”

  “Yeah,” she drawled, her voice whispery soft and intellectual. “I don’t have to be in class until later tomorrow afternoon, so I’ll drive back to Statesboro sometime in the morning.”

  Elaine had attended Georgia Southern since fall term after our senior year. “I’d like to come by and see you, if that’s okay,” I said. “I’ve got something to talk to you about.”

  “That sounds ominous. Sure. Come on.”

  I darted into my bedroom, retrieved my keys and purse, and then let Mama and Daddy know where I was going.

  Mama stood in the middle of the den, arms crossed, and eyes wide. “Well—what—what . . .”

  “Spit it out, Paulina,” Daddy said from his chair. I noted a dessert plate with telltale signs of my pound cake sitting on the occasional table next to him.

  “What if Westley comes over?” Mama finally sputtered.

  “He won’t be here until later. Besides, his church was having some kind of function today and his mother and father really wanted him to hang out afterward.” I shrugged. “I don’t know what, really. I just know he said he wouldn’t be here until later on.” I looked to my father. “How was the cake, Daddy?”

  Daddy smiled in approval. “Not bad,” he said, rubbing his belly. “Especially seeing as that was your first go at it. Westley will gain twenty pounds the first year of marriage, I’ll betcha.”

  Mama crossed over to me then and her hands fluffed my hair, which fell in dull brown waves to my shoulders. “We really need to talk about your hair.”

  I pulled away. “What about it?”

  “Leave her alone, Paulina,” Daddy said, his eyes fixed on the television.

  “We have to think about how she’ll wear it for the wedding.” She looked at me sympathetically. “You got my sister’s hair, God bless it.”

  “Pearl has beautiful hair,” Daddy said, his head still not moving.

  Mama huffed. “Not Pearl. You act like Pearl is the only sister I have. I’m talking about Meryl.”

  I started for the door. “Mama, we’ll talk about m
y hair later. Right now, I really need to get to Elaine’s.” I flashed a smile her way to soften the moment. “I’m going to ask her to be my maid of honor.”

  “Oh,” Mama said, suddenly brightening at the thought that I was doing something toward my impending nuptials. “She doesn’t know yet?”

  I shook my head. “No. I wanted to tell her in person and this weekend has been so busy.” I glanced at my wristwatch. “I really need to go so I can get back before Westley arrives.”

  Mama shooed me toward the back door. “If he gets here before you, I’ll make sure to cut him a slice of cake.”

  I drove to my best friend’s house—a rectangular brick structure situated in the middle of a street that V’d off from downtown’s main street—in less than ten minutes. Not that in a town the size of Bynum it took much longer than that to get anywhere. Unless, of course, one traveled by bike, which Elaine and I had certainly done enough in our younger days. There wasn’t a Saturday or weekday of the summer months I could remember that hadn’t involved meeting halfway and then riding most of the day away, up one road and down another, finding our way downtown, pedaling between storefront buildings. Making our way to the local five-and-dime for a candy bar and an orange Nehi. At some point we’d find our way back to her home or mine where we’d eat a sandwich and a handful of chips. Tummies filled, we’d change into our swimsuits, then pedal to the county recreation department where we swam for hours, our bodies coated in coconut-scented lotion and the overpowering odor of chlorine.

  We’d spent our youth tanned and toned and blissfully happy.

  There was also nothing I didn’t know about her and little she didn’t know about me, even though her fairly recent decision to go to school and mine to stay in Bynum meant we talked less as the weeks and months slipped by. Especially as my relationship with Westley deepened.

  I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of reaction I’d get from Elaine; she hadn’t quite forgiven me for not going away to college together. Being dormmates. Sorority sisters and all that. I imagined that, by Elaine’s way of thinking, my marriage to Westley was nothing more than me throwing my life away on the first man to pay me the tiniest smidgen of attention.